I was wondering if British graduate schools are similar to US schools in how they finance graduate studies. I know that if I get accepted to a US school it is more than likely that tuition will be waived/funded and I will be provided with a stipend. Is this true for graduate schools in the UK?

If you are not UK citizen, then you wont qualify for what they call 'research council funding', which is how a british guy would get his heavy tuition fee paid for him, as well as living costs sometimes. In that case you must rely on private sources like scholarships, which I can see have a far higher competition than what they are worth. The good thing though, is that these sources are all grouped together nicely on the application form so that you wont need to hunt around. But they wont always gaurantee enough funding, so maybe you only find out you'd still have to pay half of 10000 pounds every year after you've got your offer. That really puts international students off uk postgrad physics, i think.